TSBIRBV Ch 9

Chapter 9. Homeless, Templeless, and Now Guideless (2)

“Understood.”

Jinyeong stepped closer to the desk, his mind already cataloging the long list of matters that needed to be resolved before their return to the Ten-Thousand Great Mountains.

“So,” Je Haryang said without looking up from the letter he was writing, “has your curiosity been satisfied?”

Jinyeong froze mid-step, startled. His lord, still focused on the document before him, spoke with an edge of quiet severity that made his back stiffen.

“N-no, my lord.”

He had hoped to slip away unnoticed, not realizing he would be discovered this quickly. But since Je Haryang had already guessed his movements, there was little point in hiding it now.

“So, your little excursion was for nothing then.”

“Not entirely,” Jinyeong replied, choosing his words carefully. “I realized that the guest is nothing like I expected.”

“‘Nothing like you expected,’ hm?”

Je Haryang gave a faint, humorless smile. His lips softened, but his eyes did not. They held a stillness too deep to read—something between faraway melancholy and unfathomable suspicion.

Whatever it was, Jinyeong could not hope to measure it.

Aside from delivering urgent reports, he also had documents requiring Je Haryang’s approval. He laid the bamboo scrolls neatly on the desk one by one, but Haryang didn’t so much as glance up. He continued writing, his brush strokes steady, deliberate.

Jinyeong was just about to return to his place when he caught sight of the signature being penned at the bottom of the letter: Baekyang Jin-in.

He knew that name.

“Must you really send it to Kunlun?” Jinyeong asked after a brief hesitation.

His opinion that the suspicious guest should be removed from Je Haryang’s side hadn’t changed. The problem lay elsewhere—Je Haryang himself.

The moment his lord had found the youth named Mun Yegyeol collapsed by the river at the foot of Mount Kunlun, he had personally carried him to the Qinghai estate. Normally, Je Haryang wouldn’t have gone near a physician, yet he summoned several to treat the stranger’s wounds. He had stayed by his bedside without rest, forgetting even to eat or sleep, until the young man opened his eyes.

Even Jinyeong, who had served his lord the longest among the three retainers, had never seen him like that before. To see Je Haryang tethered so completely to another’s life and death—it was disquieting. It wasn’t in his nature to cling to miracles where there was no hope.

It had seemed… dangerous.

A fire burning in water—that’s what it felt like. Je Haryang was the fire, and Yegyeol the soaked piece of wood that shouldn’t burn at all.

Jinyeong had been half sick with worry. If that guest had died, he feared—irrationally, perhaps—that his lord might have bitten through his own tongue on the spot.

Even if that made no sense, that was how desperate Je Haryang had appeared.

And now that the guest has recovered, he’s sending him away to Kunlun…?

Considering how he had behaved before, this decision was anything but ordinary.

For the first time since Jinyeong had entered the room, Je Haryang’s brush came to a halt. He set it down.

“For a disciple,” he said quietly, “there is no better refuge than Kunlun.”

A chill slid down Jinyeong’s spine.

Je Haryang had many enemies, but none so formidable as the mountain of Kunlun itself—a threshold that would never again open for him.

“I may have slain the living,” Je Haryang murmured, “but even I cannot cut down the dead.”

He alone could never set foot upon that mountain again.

He had sworn, upon the soul of the dead, that he would never return to that sacred ground.

Each year, when the anniversary of the Blood Calamity approached, he would stand at a distance—watching the clouds coil around the mountain’s peak like ghosts—but never ascend.

Neither in life, nor after death, would his flesh or ashes ever touch Kunlun’s soil again.

“Deliver this to Samrang,” he said, handing Jinyeong the letter.

The retainer looked down at it with a conflicted expression. He knew his master would not change his mind, but he could not help but wonder if this was truly the right choice.

To nurse someone back to life so tenderly, only to send him away for his own protection—it was crueler than any punishment.

Still, Jinyeong bowed low. “At once, my lord.”

“Oh—and one more thing.”

He looked up.

“Leave that here.”

Jinyeong followed his gaze to the flowerpot he still carried. He set it carefully beside the desk before retreating, bowing once more as he left the room.

When the door closed, Je Haryang unrolled the bamboo scrolls, his face blank—as though he’d never written a single letter in his life.

Time passed slowly. The shadow of the brush holder stretched across his hand.

Finally, he gathered the scrolls and set them aside. It was nearly time to bring Yegyeol his meal—and with it, his medicine.

As he rose from his seat, his eyes drifted toward the flowerpot.

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and brushed a fingertip against one of the crumpled leaves. Then, startled by his own action, he drew his hand back sharply—as though burned—and left the room.

It was evening by the time Je Haryang appeared, wearing his usual gentle expression.

“I saw Jinyeong returning with a flowerpot,” he said. “You didn’t happen to run into him, did you?”

“Ah.”

Caught mid-bite, Yegyeol dropped his gaze. So Jinyeong hadn’t tattled—but he hadn’t expected the man to be that conspicuous about it either.

Idiot.

Clicking his tongue inwardly, Yegyeol began to unpack the excuse he had prepared in advance.

“You told me not to go outside during the day, but I was getting restless, so I just took a short walk in the garden. Then, all of a sudden, I ran into someone from your trading company—it startled me.”

“So, you pulled a plant that was firmly rooted in the ground,” Je Haryang said mildly. His tone was controlled, but something beneath it trembled faintly—something he was holding back.

Yegyeol couldn’t tell if it was amusement or exasperation.

“I didn’t want him to tell you I was out there,” he continued quickly. “So I just… grabbed the first thing I could reach and handed it to him as a gift.”

“My disciple has quite the discerning eye, it seems. That was a flower imported from the Western Regions.”

Je Haryang’s lips curved faintly, the hint of a smile playing there.

Yegyeol froze.

He’d just realized he’d stolen an expensive ornamental plant and given it away as hush money.

“I’ll—I’ll go get it back right now!”

He sprang up, but Je Haryang’s hand caught his wrist before he could bolt.

“It’s fine.”

“But the flower—”

“It’s fine,” Haryang repeated softly. “What in my possession could I ever begrudge you?”

His voice was tender—too tender.

“Besides,” he added, “even if you went looking, would you know where to find him?”

Find him?

The way he referred to Jinyeong made Yegyeol pause. Next time I see that man, he thought grimly, I should probably be nicer.

“Um… no, I wouldn’t.”

Of course he wouldn’t. His world was confined to this room and the garden beyond it. He hadn’t even considered wandering farther from Haryang’s side.

Once he sat back down, Je Haryang’s gaze softened—subtly, imperceptibly, but it was there.

“Why are you so tense?”

At the question, Yegyeol rolled his eyes once before answering.

“I thought you’d scold me.”

“For what?”

“For taking off my bandages, wandering outside in broad daylight, and giving away something valuable without permission.”

“The sky was overcast today,” Haryang replied calmly. “You wouldn’t have strained your eyes. And I’m sorry for leaving you alone long enough to grow restless. As for the flower—flowers can always be replanted.”

For something supposedly precious, there wasn’t a hint of regret on his face.

Even as a martial artist, Je Haryang had been unmatched—leader of the Young Dragon-Tiger Gathering—and now, as a merchant, he exuded the same quiet mastery.

But what struck Yegyeol most was how that distant warmth he’d only ever admired from afar was now directed solely at him.

It felt almost unreal—like being granted a second life.

“Just be patient a little longer,” Haryang said. “Once you’re back in Kunlun, you’ll be free to wander as much as you like.”

That damned Kunlun.

Yegyeol wanted to grab his younger self by the throat—the one who’d once said he couldn’t wait to return there with his senior brother.

This was all his past life’s fault.

Back then, he’d believed that if there were dragons soaring through the sea of clouds that surrounded Kunlun’s peaks, one of them would surely be Je Haryang.

He had given his life for that distant, untouchable ideal. Only after being reborn had he realized that Je Haryang was no god—just a man.

A painfully human man.

If only I could find a reason—a good reason—for him to keep me by his side.

Every excuse that came to mind was too flimsy, slipping through his fingers like water. Maybe he was just too anxious to think straight.

Would pretending to have altitude sickness work?

He didn’t want to worry him by feigning illness. But without at least a shred of that concern, his life really was like a candle flickering in the wind.

Better to make him worry than to actually die, right?

As that grim thought crossed his mind, Je Haryang finally spoke again.

“There’s something I must tell you.”

Yegyeol straightened instinctively. He could feel it—the weight of what was coming.

His steady gaze said he was ready. Yet even then, Haryang hesitated.

When he finally spoke, his voice was calm—but it struck like thunder.

“You said you remember little after the massacre at Kunlun,” he began.

Yegyeol nodded silently.

“Yegyeol,” Haryang said, his eyes steady and unreadable, “it’s been twenty years since then.”